Thursday, March 22, 2012

I want to talk about 'reincarnation' or as Vitvan prefers to call it, the palingenetic process. It's a subject I used to be so fascinated by and seemingly proved for me everything else about the mystery teachings and just the purposefulness of life, yet now I rarely speak about. A large part of the reason I don't talk about it anymore is because Vitvan threw a wrench in to the whole concept of reincarnation as it relates to my understanding. For most people, speaking on reincarnation is partly an egotistical indulgence. You get to think about your past lives and how important you were and what adventurous experiences you took part in. Well Vitvan shuts down this whole notion by professing that the personality never reincarnates. So when you take away that egotistical aspect of reincarnation, then many will lose interest. And going further, it is a concept that is difficult to grasp. I can think back to when I first read Vitvan's ideas on reincarnation. I remember feeling a sadness. I felt like something was taken away from me. It goes hand in hand with his concept of there being no I am I in itself. The personality is not retained. Just as the physical body is shed at death, the astral body or personality is soon to follow. And for me a neophyte newly initiated into the deeper teachings, I felt very proud of myself and my intellectual understanding of the teachings. To think that when this life is said and done that this all will be returned to dust was a sad notion for me. Well since then that type of egotism in relation to the personality reincarnating and building an ego has receded. If that is the natural order, which I believe it to be, then what is the point in fighting it? I would just be holding onto some phantom mental construct, just the things that through the help of Vitvan and General Semantics I was learning to rid myself of.

So if you were to talk to someone who had not studied Vitvan or any type of true mystery teachings, you would likely not on the same wavelength in regard to discussing the personality not creating. It takes time to work that into the consciousness. And that is a difficulty with Vitvan's whole system of teaching. It is very specific and has it's own language and orientation. You have no shot in getting it over to a pure aristotelian who has never studied metaphsyics or occultism. And you'll likely have trouble communicating it to someone who has a foundation in metaphysics and occultism. One could likely get oriented toward after 6 months to a year, but who blindly wants to commit all of that time and energy on some blind faith. There seemingly aren't many who are willing to invest in it. Not to mention most find their preferred teachers and doctrines and they stick with that for the long haul. I'm not knocking it, thats just how it seems to work.

So going farther into the concept of reincarnation. I was watching a Youtube video of a man who was into magic and spirituality. He was leaving Youtube and posting his farewell video. He talked of being withdrawn from the world. He spoke of having visions of a unity deep within his consciousness. In other words, he had entertained the idea of suicide to re-connect the oneness and unity of all things because of the bitter disappointment he was experiencing on this 'plane'. That's obviously a monstrous semantic blockage. If I could only leave this world I'd be better off in heaven. There I would know true love. And I'm not knocking it, I think many of us have entertained these ideas at some point or another. But if we were to understand the true structure of things then I think suicides would be greatly curbed. In reality, they will only be increasing as the years go by. You have more and more people forced to interact and culture that becomes exponentially more decadent with the passing years. There will be those who do not fit who are ostracized and outcasted who will see no other way out.

So the truth in my mind (and this is what Vitvan teaches and can be cross referenced through studying other teachers' writings) is that when one ends their life before it is their time that the archetype for the life or field of desire still exists, only now there is no material with which to go out and achieve those desires. So you can kill off and divest yourself of the body, but you cannot rid yourself of the pattern that was yours and yours alone that you created upon entering into this world. Thus it is that much worse to have the pattern remain yet have no means by which to fulfill it. One would now suffer that much more in this experience than he was suffering when he exited the waking earth life. It sounds hard to belief probably that one who found no other alternative and went against his Self and those inner desires would find a worse fate than he had when he decided to commit suicide, but that seems to be the case. To go Aristotelian, your human will does not have the right to assume the position of God and make those choices from your personal desires. But there is no condemning on my part, in that person's consciousness at that time, somehow they found the power to thwart the will of the Self. That is the only decision that made sense to them at the time. And so they will learn from that mistake and it will be a painful imprinting they will seemingly receive. So the lesson is that any experience that we go through here on earth is better than having to experience life "on the other side" as a suicide. And going further, either way the law or natural order process will find its balance.

Moving on, another aspect of death and a spiritualist's view on what is to come afterwards is that there will be exalted consciousness, heaven will be experienced in peace and love. Vitvan teaches that this is not necessarily the case. For instance, one might say that he now in this earth life through his studies, knows that he is a deathless, eternal, immortal being. And in this knowing, when he sheds this gross, material body, he will experience that immortality. This thinking is based in dualistic thinking. It separates the world into two: the 'material' and 'spiritual' worlds. While in this life, a person who has this may put all of his energy into escaping this dross, material world in search of the exalted spiritual world. So in essence, that would equate to searching for absolutism in dualism. But in experiencing absolutism there can be no dual existence. What I mean here is that when one reaches an absolute condition, the duality disappears. What I mean and what Vitvan teaches is that there is no getting to some exalted state by trying to escape one circumstance for another. At the core there is only one world. You must manifest it here, bring heaven to earth here, to experience "after death." So there can be no 'spiritual' world that is higher than the 'material' world. These abstracted worlds can have no existence in reality because if you take one away, the other must fall away.

So in reality, according to Vitvan, when we pass out we will experience the same state of consciousness that we had in our "waking life." So you could separate ones who functioned in the lower psyche, higher psyche and on the Mind level. We'll just consider these arbitrary values or abstractions having no basis in the true structure of things. But so if one were to function in the lower psyche in earth life, upon exiting the body or configuration, he would dwell in the lower astral world for a period. At some point when it was time to move on to the higher levels and begin building the archetype for the subsequent life to be lived, that one would go 'unconscious'. Why would he go unconscious? Because he had not yet developed a body to function in the 'higher levels'. One who functioned in the higher psyche in earth life, otherwise considered the mental body, would exit the body and find resonance with the higher astral plane and experience that state until he moved to levels that he was not able to consciously function on. Now we make the line of demarcation at the Mind level. Vitvan tells us that one who makes the second crossing over to the Mind level has obtained immortality. This means that that one has continuity of consciousness. Now so called death would not mean death at all. This one on the Mind level would be just as conscious as he was in so called "waking life." So expecting immortality because we believe in Jesus or have a conceptual understanding of how the cosmos works is pure stupidity. It is not natural order. I personally am not disparaging the belief in something higher or the intellectual understanding, but it is not commensurate with how we experience life after death. That is based off of our basic point in development according to Vitvan.

So it all sounds so bleak?!?!?! We have to do the work. No one can take in nourishment for us. "Faith without works is dead." So yeah, in my opinion when you put it all on the table it is difficult to accept and go forth and fight the good fight. There is much working against us and most of the time we are at the forefront halting our own progress. But this is why the process is so perfect. One can't skirt around the duties of life by committing suicide. One cannot go to "heaven" by simply believing in Jesus Christ. It is about the work. And that work becomes seemingly easier if we obtain a good road map, but the map is not the territory. In my opinion the road map lays everything out on the table. A good road map acknowledges that impurities must first be purged. Otherwise we are only deluding ourselves that we can take our lower qualities with us as we expand our consciousness into the heights. That's like saying the dark can exist in the light. So it is not sweetness and light, it is a fucking hell of a job, work to do. And when it is all put on the table, all the demons come out of their hole and you see yourself for who you are, the task seems even that much more difficult. "Shit, I didn't sign up for all this". "Oh yes, you did!" I guess it is a question of ignorance versus strife. And I guess all comes to the light for a reason. And if it came by accident a great lesson will still be learned anyways. Bad or good, what do you mean? All is for Good.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

"Go to meditation. In this process, one must direct all of his "first fruits" - that is, his forces or energies - to the Power with which he is conscious. What is the "first fruit" anyone is conscious of? It is the energy which is used in generation: it is this energy which is offered. That is what I call meditation. And anything short of that I will not call meditation. If, in oneself, he wants to complete the circuit, he must first make this offering. I do not want to hold on to my objective self-conscious state and expect something to come to me. I have to give myself first. The seed is cast into the earth. Unless it dies it produces no fruit. "He who gives up his life for my sake shall find it." The who point hinges on the surrender, giving up, offering in genuineness, in sincerity - almost in desperation - offering it all. The conscious direction of generative energy and surrender of it is the positive attitude, as it requires sustained effort and will and is, therefore, not a supine relaxation. In this directive way we say: Release, renounce, let go. Offer your force, offer your energy, give it up, surrender, let the energies or forces leap to the positive pole. And...bang! The circuit is completed, the fire descends-the, Light."

Prior to this section of text, Vitvan used a rain cloud as an example or metaphor. The cloud represents the positive pole. There is negative energy stirring about the ground below the cloud and it moves along with the cloud and this goes on until a connection can be effected. Bang! The negative energy makes its offering and a circuit is created and you have what we label lightning.

The seed is probably my favorite allegorical symbol or metaphor. What comes to mind is the concept of positive, negative, positive or alpha, omega, alpha. In one word, a CYCLE. The Power lowers itself or dies to itself on a 'lower level' so that it can go through a cycle and gain knowledge of Itself. So on each subsequent or lower level, to exist on that level, it inherently had to die on the next highest level. The catch is that it is guided by that "dead" higher level. So if we look at reality as it is in truth, there are no levels, there is no separation. The Power that supposedly died to Itself, still remains in Its same state only behind a curtain. Like the Wizard of Oz it directs the play. On these so called "lower levels" it has taken a lower state and so we could call it as Vitvan does, "the power to be conscious". So we stay cognizant that this power to be conscious is attached to the Power and is in fact the Power in reality, yet it is now only in a potential state. It now has the possibility to be conscious of itself.

Once it has died to itself, or planted the seed, it has now entered into a cycle. It must 'lower' itself 'down' successive states of consciousness until it can focus itself in individual state. It goes from knowing itself as the Father to becoming the Son. The Son represents half the cycle, it represents complete potentiality being loaded into the consciousness. 'I am the way, the truth and the life. None come to the Father except by way of the Son'. We read this paraphrase from the bible and think about an objective person named Jesus, but to the masters it represented so much more. To me this says that one must first individualize or load all potentiality into the seed that has been unconsciously created by the power to be conscious (going through the descending arc). To begin the ascension back to the Father, one must make the full descension. You can't go part of the way down and turn around. The cycle must complete a full revolution. Note: One could seemingly devolve, but that would in my opinion result in oblivion. One would return to the Father but yet have no self-knowledge. And in fact, this is what occultists will tell you happens to races. They reach a certain height of expression and then slowly fade away. But then that relates to form or mother substance and we are looking at it from the standpoint of the Power or 'Spirit'.

So man is only a means to an end. Man is not the completion by any stretch of our imagination. But one thing I am trying to be more conscious of is that each moment is an end in itself. If we acknowledge that time does not exist in reality, then where is the end? If there is only eternity or the absence of time, then where are we going? But going further we must acknowledge that we are not at that point in the development of the power to be conscious and that these are only abstractions. We have to do the work. And it seems that the work can be done by staying focused in the moment. But if we are able to conceptualize and see that man is only a state between the animal and "the gods" then we can buckle down and have an idea of where we are going. See the paradox never goes away. There is a goal to attain, we have some level we want to reach but that level is not outside of ourselves. It is always there and always has been. Only the veil need be pulled back. But it isn't an objective veil and simply having an idea of the future work to be done is no sure thing.

If we acknowledge that we must die to our current state and let go of the qualities that represent our psyche, then that seems like a good start. The personal will can only take us so far. We can build up that psyche or ego, but at a certain point, when it is time to ascend it becomes our nemesis. So we must plant the psyche in the ground, plant all of our human values down into the darkness and have faith that this higher Power is guiding us. That in fact this Power is who we are in essence and that the psyche is only an extension of the Power. 'Thy will be done, not mine'. We can be grateful for the pysche in having brought to more conscious awareness of this reality, but if we are to fulfill the state in which we are conscious or complete the cycle, then we must let go of this level.

We find ourselves now in our current state on the threshold of the beautific states it seems. Where in the past aeons the power to be conscious has continuously died to the higher levels and sank further down into unconsciousness as it built up the potentiality. Now we are at the lowest point possible we could reach in the scheme of evolution or self-development. We must now again identify with the higher state. The Mind level is the throne that we seek. We have the opportunity to rise up and identify the power with which we are conscious with, with the higher level that has been directing us. And this is only a small step in the grand scheme that we find ourselves woven within. Vitvan says that the Mind level is the lowest level in Light's regions. It is all so vast that there is no point in contemplating it or abstracting any higher. For me, I want to know where the next step is and the best possible means to achieve that state. So according to Vitvan, the Mind level is our next home. That is our boon for fulfilling this current state. So right now if we are diligent and concerned with functional ability then it would be in our best interest to get control of the psyche, become conscious of all the wave-frequencies that we are now conscious of or need to be conscious of to take the forward step.

The bible says that, 'none go to the Father except by way of the Son'. Well in my opinion a good analogy in relation to this passage, is that none reach the next wave of the cycle except by fulfilling the current. None go through to the Mind except by way of the psyche. All unconsciousness must be brought to the light. This means that we must be aware of all wave-frequencies that the psyche registers. At this point there is no unconsciousness. Being aware of all of our motivations, all that we register, we can now control our situations it would seem. Unconsciousness is only relative to the objective level. When one enters the psychic world then there would cease being an unconscious.

When trying to make this functional, my question is when is it time to 'die'? Vitvan tells us that the ego must be built up. You must have something to give at the altar. Eckhart Tolle mentions nothing about building up an ego. He simply tells you to let go of your thoughts and be in the now, experience the bliss. I guess one way of looking at is that experiencing life in the now builds the ego. Both of their teachings correlate in the sense that they both tell us to experience the here-now. There is no past or future, only the present moment. And this is a practical teaching, it isn't something to simply mentalize about. Vitvan would tell you to just keep winning small battles, this will build the ego sense. The irony is that when one has lost the battles over and over again and has lost that confidence and sense of I am I, it is easier to die or at least the desire is greater. And when everything is at 9's and 10's that ego sense puffs up and subtly one wants to attribute at least some of it to himself usually it would seem. So I guess this is why the process is so perfect. There is no cheating it.